William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography: It Starts from Any Point

199 Pages·2011·6.46 MB·English

by  Steven Spier

CMYK

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edited by steven spier
William Forsythe and the
Practice of Choreography
William Forsythe’s twenty-year career as director of the Ballett Frankfurt
helped to reinvigorate the language of classical ballet. His work today with
The Forsythe Company continues to see him lauded as one of the greatest
choreographers of the postwar era. He is responsible for challenging
fundamental assumptions about choreography and for creating work that
draws from such diverse fields as ballet, literature, philosophy, popular
culture, higher mathematics, architecture, and cognitive science.
This collection brings together essays from a diverse range of critical
voices on ballet and contemporary dance studies, alongside analysis and
testament from Forsythe’s collaborators and company members, as well as
the choreographer himself.
Forsythe’s practice is studied in relation to a variety of elements, with essays
examining his earlier use of ballet, performance history and development,
collaboration, and the uses of music and sound. William Forsythe and the
Practice of Choreography offers students, scholars, and practitioners of ballet
and contemporary dance a fascinating insight into the creative world of this
visionary artist.
Steven Spier is Professor and Head of the School of Architecture and Design
at the University of Ulster. Previously he was founding president and vice-
chancellor of the HafenCity University Hamburg. He is an authority on the
work of William Forsythe as well as contemporary European architecture.
William Forsythe and the
Practice of Choreography
It Starts From Any Point
Edited by Steven Spier
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Selection and Editorial Matter © 2011 Steven Spier
Individual Chapters © 2011 the contributors
The right of Steven Spier to be identified as author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters has been asserted, in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1998.
Typeset in Sabon by
HWA Text and Data Management, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
William Forsythe and the practice of choreography / edited by Steven Spier.
p. cm.
1. Forsythe, William, 1949– 2. Choreographers–United States
Biography. 3. Dance teachers–United States–Biography.
4. Frankfurter Ballett. I. Spier, Steven.
GV1785.F66W527 2011
792.8'2092–dc22 [B] 2010031555
ISBN: 978-0-415-97822-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-97823-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-83223-3 (ebk)
For my parents
Contents
List of figures ix
List of contributors x
Acknowledgements xiii
Credits xiv
Introduction: The practice of choreography 1
STEVEN SPIER
1 Watching the Ballett Frankfurt, 1988–2009 4
ROSLYN SULCAS
2 Of monsters and puppets: William Forsythe’s work
after the ‘Robert Scott Complex’ 20
GERALD SIEGMUND
3 Splintered encounters: the critical reception to
William Forsythe in the United States, 1979–1989 38
MARk FRANkO
4 Nijinsky’s heir: a classical company leads modern dance 51
SENTA DRIVER
5 Timbral architectures, aurality’s force: sound and music 54
CHRIS SALTER
6 Dancing music: the intermodality of The Forsythe
Company 73
FREYA VASS- RHEE
7 Choreographic objects 90
WILLIAM FORSYTHE
viii Contents
8 Decreation: fragmentation and continuity 93
DANA CASPERSEN
9 Inside the knot that two bodies make 101
STEVEN SPIER
10 Aberrations of gravity 112
HEIDI GILPIN
11 The space of memory: William Forsythe’s ballets 128
GERALD SIEGMUND
12 Choreographic thinking and amateur bodies 139
STEVEN SPIER
Alphabetical list of works 151
Chronological list of works 155
Index 181
Figures
5.1 Author’s notes for Eidos : Telos 62
5.2 Joel Ryan playing the wire. 63
5.3 From Part Three of Eidos : Telos 65
6.1 David Morrow, Dietrich krüger, William Forsythe, and
Niels Lanz in the sound booth during a performance of
Three Atmospheric Studies in Dublin, Ireland, 2008 78
6.2 Excerpt from David Morrow’s score for Part Two of
Three Atmospheric Studies 83
6.3 David kern, Roberta Mosca, and Christopher Roman in
You made me a monster 85
6.4 Ander Zabala and Yoko Ando in Part Three of
Three Atmospheric Studies 86
10.1 Diagram of Labanotation from Rudolph von Laban 119
10.2 Tracy-kai Maier-Forsythe in Limb’s Theorem 123
12.1 From White Bouncy Castle 141
12.2 From City of Abstracts 143
12.3 From Scattered Crowd 144
12.4 From Instructions 145
12.5 The Bockenheimer Depot foyer interior, unoccupied 147
12.6 The Bockenheimer Depot foyer interior, in use 148
Contributors
Dana Caspersen is an American artist who has been working in Frankfurt,
Germany since 1988, first as a member of the Ballett Frankfurt and now
The Forsythe Company. She has contributed to and created numerous
works for the stage as a dancer, actress, choreographer, and author. For her
work as a performer she was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Creative
Achievement and has been nominated for the Lawrence Olivier Theater
Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. She is a published poet
and essayist, and her written texts have formed the basis for numerous
works by William Forsythe.
Senta Driver has been covering Forsythe since 1988, and edited William
Forsythe in 2000 as vol. 5, number 3 of the journal Choreography and
Dance. She danced with the Paul Taylor Company from 1967–73, and
made dance and other works for her own company, HARRY, from
1975–91. During that time she was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978, and
panelist for numerous public and private funding agencies. She served on
the Board and Executive Committee of Dance/USA and spent nine years
in the same capacity for the Dance Notation Bureau, finishing in 2006
with a stint as Acting Director of Programs.
William Forsythe is the artistic director of The Forsythe Company, an
independent ensemble that he founded in 2004, with the support of
the states of Saxony and Hessen, the cities of Dresden and Frankfurt
am Main, and private sponsors. The company is based in Dresden and
Frankfurt am Main and maintains an extensive international touring
schedule. From 1984-2004, Forsythe was director of the Ballett Frankfurt.
His most recent works are developed and performed exclusively by The
Forsythe Company, while his earlier pieces are prominently featured in
the repertoire of virtually every major ballet company in the world. His
performance, film, and installation work have been presented in museums
and exhibitions worldwide.
Awards received by Forsythe and his ensembles include the New York
Dance and Performance Bessie Award (1988, 1998, 2004, and 2007), and
Contributors xi
London’s Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999, and 2009). Forsythe has
been conveyed the title of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999) by the
government of France, and has received the German Distinguished Service
Cross (1997), the Wexner Prize (2002), and the Golden Lion at the Venice
Dance Biennale (2010). He is an Honorary Fellow at the Laban Centre
for Movement and Dance in London and holds an honorary doctorate
from the Juilliard School in New York. He was raised in New York.
Mark Franko is Professor of Dance at the University of California, Santa
Cruz, and was Valeska Gert Visiting Professor for Dance and Performance
at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin in 2008.
His publications include: Excursion for Miracles: Paul Sanasardo, Donya
Feuer, and Studio for Dance; The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and
Identity in the 1930s; Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics (1996
de la Torre Bueno prize Special Mention); Dance as Text: Ideologies of
the Baroque Body (Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions kargo,
2005; Palermo: L’Epos, 2009); and The Dancing Body in Renaissance
Choreography. He is editor of Dance Research Journal, and edited Ritual
and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, and co-edited Acting on the Past:
Historical Performance Across the Disciplines. His choreography has been
produced at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Berlin Werkstatt
Festival, The Getty Center, the Montpellier Opera, Toulon Art Museum,
and Akademie der künste (Berlin).
Heidi Gilpin is Chair of European Studies and Associate Professor of
performance studies, electronic arts, architectural studies, cultural theory,
and multidisciplinary studies in the German Department at Amherst
College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Gilpin holds a PhD in Comparative
Literature from Harvard University. From 1989–1996 she worked in
Frankfurt as Dramaturg (conceptual author) for William Forsythe and the
Ballett Frankfurt, where they developed strategies of movement research
involving architectural principles and interactive technologies. Her book,
Architectures of Disappearance: Movement in Performance, New Media,
and Architecture, and her edited volume of multidisciplinary essays and
materials on movement and perception, The Senses in Motion, are both
forthcoming from the MIT Press.
Chris Salter is an artist, Associate Professor for Computation Arts at
Concordia University and researcher at the Hexagram Institute in
Montreal. He has collaborated with Peter Sellars, and William Forsythe,
and co-founded the collective Sponge, whose works stretched between
artistic production, theoretical reflection, and scientific research. Salter’s
performances, installations, research, and publications have been
presented at numerous festivals and conferences around the world,
including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Ars Electronica, Exit Festival-